Farthest House

by Margaret Lukas

  Papa sat in a chair, not facing the table, but his long legs stretched out parallel to it, one elbow on the oak for support. Willow could see, as well as I, that he hadn’t been up long. Still barefoot, he wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt left open, the way he dressed in the mornings at home, coming into the kitchen to start coffee and Willow’s toast, not bothering with shirt buttons before stepping into the shower.

  While his clothes reminded Willow of their regular life, nothing on his face or in his posture did. He sat slumped, as though Tory’s yelling whacked him down. His eyes were shut, and his mouth formed a hard line. When he came to the attic for her and told her Mémé was dead, he was sad, but this sadness was different.

  “Stop and think,” Tory said, her voice ripe with irony, “how much it would hurt Mom’s reputation and the good name she cared so much about. Jonah, too. How much are you willing to put him through? Jail time? Even Willow, what would it do to her?” She paused and with more emphasis, “I’m your sister. You owe me, Julian. Cop.” She stopped, letting the words sizzle in the air. Then, “You lied to me.”

  Julian’s elbow shifted on the table, his palm rose, and he dropped his forehead into it, hooding his eyes as if to shut Tory out.

  Careful not to lose her balance and make the door bang, Willow shifted her weight to see more. Tory wore a narrow black dress that reached to mid-calf. On her feet were long black pumps. Her hair was knotted tight at the nape of her neck, her lipstick red.

  It’s not fair, Willow thought. Papa was tricked. He came into the kitchen just to have coffee with Tory, but she’d gotten up earlier, dressed, and waited for him. Willow wanted to crash into the room and tell Tory to shut up! She wondered why Papa wasn’t defending himself.

  A shadow on the ceiling above his head caught her eye. Thin and gray at first, she tried to ignore the gloom. As she watched color draining from her father’s face, the stain darkened, morphing through several shades until it reached black ink. The shape began to tremble. She closed her eyes, willed it gone and looked again. The sight pushed her to her knees. Out of the blackness, wings were forming, heavy and thick with plumage. Her heart pounded as she felt the drag and weight of the wings struggling to loosen themselves, as if unearthing from a grave.

  Then it happened. Papa’s head lifted from his hand, dropped back, and his face lay exposed to the ceiling. The black—a table-sized raven now—peeled off the ceiling, talons and keen eyes swooping down. The specter shadowed Papa’s face, seemed to bleed into it, and vanished.

  Julian’s head came forward slowly, and he opened his eyes. Willow wanted to believe she only dreamed the darkness. If what she saw could be a dream, she’d trade away the rose and Mother Moses and say Mémé’s visit had also only been a dream. He stood and walked out of the kitchen, passing her without seeing her hiding there. She watched him cross the foyer and step barefoot onto the icy porch. His feet were on the exact spot where he said of her to Mémé, “She’s got to live in this world. This one right here.”

  A large reception followed Luessy’s funeral. It pleased me to see so many drive up Old Squaw Road, aging faces that had been young when I lived. Writers from all points in the state came and news crews from Omaha and Lincoln. They filled the lower rooms of Farthest House, milling about with small plates of food and ready conversation. Only the library was kept locked, the skeleton key deep in Tory’s sewing basket.

  As Julian wandered from one room to the next, Willow followed. He moved between people, nodding, but always stepping away too quickly for conversation. Having seen the raven, and not understanding, she feared he might die, too. Everyone did. On his third pass through the dining room, avoiding the people making their way around the long table with its platters of food, he stopped before the tall windows, shoved his hands into the pockets of his black suit pants, and stared out, looking into faraway places Willow couldn’t go.

  It was Red, Julian’s partner, dressed in a suit rather than his uniform, who caught sight of Willow standing with a stricken face watching her father. He leaned down, “Hey, Little Bird, how you doing?”

  He smelled of cigarettes and aftershave and handed her a plate. “Have you eaten today? I’m starved. What looks good to you?”

  Jonah fell into line behind them, and Willow was distracted enough to nearly smile. The three men didn’t match at all. Red had white skin and red hair. Papa’s skin was darker, and he was taller and skinnier. Jonah had white hair, black skin, and he was short. But they did match, too, because they were her three favorite men, and they loved her.

  Red hadn’t yet filled his plate when Julian stepped up to him. “Let’s get some air.” They left through the kitchen and stepped out the back door. Willow hadn’t been invited. Neither had Jonah.

  The twelve dining room chairs were pulled back and set along the walls. She took one and patted the next in line for Jonah. “You can sit by me.” She never saw him in anything but overalls, and he looked funny in his new navy blue suit. His hands looked awkward holding a small plate rather than a rake. She watched him eat, hunting for an introduction into her missing pictures, Mémé’s wetting the bed, Tory’s screaming at Papa, and the raven. “You shouldn’t be in this house. Bad things happen here.”

  He’d lost so much peripheral vision that he needed to turn his head and look at her straight on. So often she spooked him. He didn’t need to be reminded that bad things happened at Farthest House, and now Luessy was gone. His appetite left, and he ignored the plate in his hands.

  “I saw Mémé in the attic,” Willow said. “She brought me the blanket and a rose. It was a rose from the garden.”

  Tory stepped in front of them. “Where’s your father? Go and get him.” And to Jonah, “I need you in the library, too.”

  Five cane-backed chairs sat in a row in front of Luessy’s enormous desk. By the time Willow returned with Papa, Tory, Mable, and Jonah were seated. Tory nodded to the man sitting behind the library desk, and he opened a briefcase with two loud snaps and removed a folder.

  “As the attorney representing the estate of Luessy Starmore….”

  I watched the actor. Had he ever before been hired for such a stunt? He played his role as convincingly as Raymond Burr. “I, Luessy Starmore, being of sound mind…. ”

  Willow peered down the row: Tory, Mable and Jonah looked intent, waiting, but Papa was silent and angry. She heard that Mable and Jonah were to receive bonuses for their years of loyalty. Money, too, for Papa. She heard her name and how on her nineteenth birthday she’d begin receiving a stipend for college, $500 a month. It sounded like more money than she could spend, but having to wait ten long years was the same as getting nothing.

  The man continued reading: Tory would remain custodian of Farthest House until her death, at which time the house would be given to Greenburr, provided said township did not disturb the graves of Mémé’s ancestors for a period of one hundred years.

  Finished, the man closed the folder and looked around for questions. When they were done, he shook Julian’s hand and then Tory’s and left the room. Mable stood, “I better tend to our guests.” Jonah and Tory followed her out. Julian continued staring straight ahead. Willow sat with him. “Papa?”

  “Get your things.”

  13

  Willow struggled to carry the double weights of Mémé’s leaving and the raven’s coming. She no longer visited Farthest House. Around the end of the first month, she stood in the doorway of Julian’s bedroom in Omaha and stared in. He’d gone out, a “quick trip,” he said, leaving her alone—something he’d not done before the raven. She knew he’d return with bread, bologna, dry packaged cookies, and wine he’d hide quickly in a high cupboard, as though she didn’t see it.

  His room felt not just empty, but hollowed out. He hadn’t made his bed since the raven, and so she hadn’t made hers. Papa didn’t care. He hadn’t worked since then either, despite Red’s coaxing. Instead, he spent his days pacing and staring out empty windows. Often, he spent the entire afterno
on sitting at the kitchen table sipping wine.

  She picked up his pillow, hugged it to her chest, and sat on the bed. She’d seen Mémé at the foot of the attic bed, proof that Mémé could come if she wanted. Proof Mémé’s staying away now, not coming even one time, was a choice. On the walls, Jeannie looked out from framed pictures. One, two, three, four, five smiling Jeannies behind glass. Jeannie had never visited either—not one time.

  Throwing the pillow onto the floor, Willow pushed off the bed and ran to the kitchen. She needed a hard, smashing thing. She grabbed a sauce pan from the sink and ran back, using all the strength in her thin arms to swing the pan again and again into the glass over Jeannie’s pictures, shards of sharp silver raining onto the floor and over her shoes. The glass on the last picture shattered but didn’t fall out of the frame. She needed to stab at it with the pan’s handle. More stabbing then, destroying the paper picture, too. Jeannie’s dumb eyes and dumb lips. Five ruined Jeannies broken on the floor.

  That night, she lay awake in the dark, staying in her bed until finally Papa turned off the kitchen light, and she heard him walk into his room. Silence. She waited. He’d come yelling down the hall. She hoped he told her she couldn’t watch television or read books ever again. She hoped he marched her back down the hall and gave her her first spanking and shook her and made her say why. She’d tell him she did it because she hated Jeannie, and she hated Mémé.

  Minutes passed, and then came the sound of slow footsteps. He stood in her doorway, looking like a shadow but for the faint yellow light from his room falling across one side of his face. He didn’t speak at first. He shifted his weight, and a floorboard under him moaned. He whispered, “You all right?”

  She bit her bottom lip.

  He waited. Finally, the floor moaned again as he turned to leave, and he whispered even more softly, “Good night, Little Bird.”

  When the sweeping and tinkling of broken glass ended and the house was quiet, she pulled out her old I Dream of Jeannie bag. She carried a solid pink backpack to school now, but she kept the Jeannie bag, using it to help practice her blinking and nodding. With her school scissors, she poked and shredded that Jeannie’s face, too.

  Through January, February and March, she missed a day or two of school each week. Those days she sat with Julian. He scolded her for missing school, but not too seriously, and she scolded him for not going to work. Neither mentioned his drinking. She watched the letters coming from school, first from Sister Beatrice, her favorite teacher ever, then from the Office of the Principal. She read sentences about her “lack of initiative” and her “high absenteeism.” The new letters began warning that without a “marked improvement,” she would need to repeat the fourth grade. For a few days, Julian made sure she went, but then her screaming and crying to stay home made him abandon his resolve. In his mind, the situation was temporary, he’d get himself together, he’d find a way to go back to work, and Willow would want to go to school again.

  For Willow, too much school was impossible. She needed to stay close to Papa and keep him from dying the way Jeannie and Mémé had. When he lay snoring, sprawled on the sofa or his bed, she needed to cover him in warm blankets and keep watch.

  Red came to the house most days, asking Willow how she was doing and trying to coax Julian into returning to work or seeking help for his depression. “If you won’t talk to me man, talk to someone.” With each visit Red’s anger grew, and by April he came through the door with his face as fiery as his hair and shaking his head at the newspapers piling up. “You’ve got to get your shit together.” By May his attitude was cold. “All right, you bastard, drink yourself to death. But what about Willow? You thought that far?” He shoved Julian, his hands flat on his ex-partner’s chest, pushing and forcing him out the back door while Willow screamed for him to stop.

  Red’s eyes never left Julian’s. “I want to break your fucking neck.” On the scrub of what had been grass, he moved around Julian, his fists up, but Julian kept his hands slack at his side. Reason enough for Red to hit him. No real man quit like this, not an ounce of fight in him. Especially not a man with a child.

  Red pulled back his fist and slammed it into Julian’s face.

  Willow screamed. Papa lay on the ground with blood rolling from his nose and upper lip.

  “Get up,” Red yelled. “Come on, you bastard. Fight. Show some dignity.”

  As Red dropped to a knee beside Julian and pulled his fist back a second time, Willow screamed and threw herself over his back, slugging his arms. “Go away. We don’t want you here.”

  Red stopped, one hand reaching back, pulling her off and around to his chest and holding her tight until she quit struggling. “I’m not going to hurt him.” He looked away from Julian and all that was unreadable in Julian’s eyes and into Willow’s. “You ever need anything, anything, you call me. All right?” Willow nodded. “I’ll be there,” he said. “You got my number?” More silent nodding. He whispered close to her ear. “Write it down, a couple of places. Not just once. Keep it close.”

  Red walked away, and Willow helped Papa stand. His weight against her proved he needed her, and she’d saved his life. She wasn’t a little girl any longer and couldn’t ever be again. She had to be strong, not die like Jeannie and Mémé. Papa needed her. She’d fix their food, wash their clothes, help him to bed at night, and then be the one to lock the doors and turn out the lights. “It’s all right,” she said. “You’re hardly bleeding. Let’s go wash your face.”

  In the fall, she was back in the fourth grade. The classroom was the same, and she had Sister Beatrice again, but her classmates were different. They taunted her at recess and snickered when they could, only dumb kids were held back. After school, Derrick Crat and others from the fifth grade called: “Hey, fourth grader!” Mary Wolfe watched.

  “The Two-Girls Club,” ended. “You have to be in the same grade to be in the club,” her friend told her.

  Sister Beatrice watched. On a cold, October day, she asked Willow to stay after and help clean erasers. When they were alone, she put her arms around her. “If you do very well over the next few months,” she stopped. She couldn’t promise too much, couldn’t set Willow up for another disappointment. She rolled Willow’s right sweater sleeve up over her hand, patted the hand, and placed it back at Willow’s side. “If you study hard, I mean scoring 100% in every subject, and you don’t miss any school, not one day,” her eyes were kind, “maybe after Christmas I can have you promoted into the fifth grade.”

  Willow nodded. She wanted to be in the fifth grade, but she couldn’t promise she’d have better attendance. What if Papa needed her at home? What if Red was there at that very minute trying to knock off Papa’s head?

  Sister Beatrice bent and kissed Willow’s forehead. “You can go now.” And just as she told her fourth graders each afternoon before they left for the day—sending them off again to who knew what worlds, “Remember, angels are coming tonight.”

  When Willow entered the house, she saw Papa still sitting at the kitchen table, just as she’d left him that morning, only now with wine and cigarettes. She thought of him as a “pretend” detective. Every day, he read the Omaha World Herald and the Lincoln Journal Star for reports of crimes and sentencings. When he finished, he refolded the papers and placed them on top of the yellowing stacks growing along the back wall of the main room.

  He lifted the sheet he’d been reading and flicked his wrists. The paper folded inward, and he spoke around the cigarette between his lips. “You’re late, I was getting worried.”

  You shouldn’t be sitting here, she wanted to say. The old Papa would be at work. Even if she was in fourth grade again, she knew that. Why didn’t he? She thought to tell him what Sister Beatrice said, but what if there were too many days she couldn’t leave him and it didn’t happen?

  An envelope lay on the table, and he pushed it in her direction with a nicotine-stained finger, but he kept the finger there, pinning the envelope to the table. She sa
w it was from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, but when she reached for it, his hand flattened and covered it.

  “So, here’s the deal,” he said. “There are laws. It’s a law kids have to go to school.” His eyes bore into hers. “A law.” He paused. “You understand what I’m saying?”

  She did. Laws that weren’t obeyed meant someone was going to jail. One or the other of them could be taken away. She fought back tears, and he put a thumb under her chin, lifting it.

  “It’s all right. You’ll go now. Every day.”

  She nodded. She knew of a thing called foster care. They could take her away from Papa.

  “Now,” Julian said, “go and get changed before you get your uniform dirty.”

  She headed for her room, not reminding him that she was the one who turned on the washer, and when they had it, poured in soap. At the end of the hall, she stopped. Her bedroom door was closed, something she hadn’t done since Mémé’s death when she quit drawing and had nothing more to hide. Why would Papa close her door? From inside, her bed squeaked. She stared at the knob. She heard walking. Backing away, she retraced her steps, and at the end of the hall, she turned and ran into the kitchen. “Somebody’s in my room.”

  Though his face looked gray, light twinkled in his glassy eyes. “How come you aren’t changed?”

  She willed herself to see only the wine-happy in his eyes. She tried to find a match there to her old memories of him, but those were deep now and nearly lost. “Somebody’s in my room.” Already that seemed unlikely.

  He swallowed wine and then flicked the ash from his cigarette. “You aren’t scared are you? Go on now. Holler if you need me.”